Saturday, 9:39 a.m. – Grand Prix Trial Winners

by Tobi Henke

As usual, Friday already saw a little bit of action. Players were gearing up for the main event and used their last chance to try and earn three byes by playing in one of the 25 Grand Prix Trials. Twenty-five? Well, "a little bit" may have been understating things.

In fact, the hall was quickly packed with busy mages, and there was so much going on, we unfortunately didn't get all of the Trial winners' deck lists. But take a look at the following—a first glance of what's to be expected over the weekend. BUG, RUG, Blue-White Miracles, Merfolk, Stoneblade, Storm, Sneak & Show, Jund ... all the staples are present, but so are some rather unexpected decks, say Affinity or the long-missed Goblins! Legacy, as varied as ever.

Saturday, 11:57 a.m. – Being Taken to Really Old School

by Tim Willoughby

Legacy is a format that lets you play with almost all the cards in Magic. There are just a few super-powerful or tournament unreasonable cards that aren't allowed. As I was making my way through the room here in Strasbourg, I was on the lookout for interesting retro decks, and happened upon the Swedes. After catching up with Joel Larsson about the deck he's playing (more on that one later), I asked briefly about Mikael Magnusson, who I know has been playing Magic for quite a while. Larsson simply laughed. "If you want to know about old school Magic, you need to talk to Mikael. Right now."

Magnusson, who had looked into playing at the very first Pro Tour in New York, is something of a connoisseur of older Magic formats, and regularly plays one of the most bonkers throwback formats I think I've ever encountered – Vintage '93-'94. The idea of the format is simple, though the practicalities of getting the cards might have been a little easier a while ago. Every card that you play with has to be printed in 1993 or 1994. That means that the 'newest' set available to play with is The Dark, and in total you only have Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Legends and The Dark as your card pool. Ante cards are banned, and the restricted list is basically the same as Vintage (for those sets). Chaos Orb is allowed, more or less as a colourless Vindicate, and the rules are modern Magic rules (so the batch is not a thing, mulligans work, and tapped blockers do deal damage). There is also a gentlemen's agreement on shuffling. "We pretty much pile shuffle and cut a few times" remarked Magnusson, as he carefully laid out a deck that is at this point a piece of history.

Control for simpler times.

Magnusson's favourite deck for the format is a multi-colour control deck that wins with Fireball or maybe a Mishra's Factory, but really looks to maintain control with cards like Mind Twist or Insomnia, while building card advantage with Library of Alexandria. Other decks that have seen popularity include mono black ("Dark Ritual into Hypnotic Specter is still pretty good") and mono red ("There are a lot of decks that are just not ready for Blood Moon"). In spite of the pretty strict restrictions on what cards can be played, it is a format that has seen a fair amount of play in Sweden, and is apparently emerging in Toronto too. They even hold a 'world championships' – worth quite a bit in terms of bragging rights.

Playing old formats can be a lot of fun, and just as Legacy allows us to take a step into the past and enjoy some of the older cards, Vintage '93-'94 harkens back to a simpler time, when Force of Will was not yet an answer, and Deathrite Shaman was 18 years away from his birth rite. Even if you can only play with proxies, it also forms quite the thought exercise. What deck would you play if you'd been on the bandwagon for Magic right at the start?

Saturday, 12:39 p.m. – Single Card Strategies #1

by Tim Willoughby

When roaming the hall as coverage, we tend to play a little game between ourselves. We aren't allowed to just sit down and have a full match of Magic when we're meant to be working (boo...) but that doesn't mean we can't have a little fun. The game normally goes like this. Whoever spots the most unlikely card in play for the weekend wins. We're two rounds in, and I think I might have struck gold.

Walking past the top tables, I passed a board with a number of noteworthy things going on. A Detention Sphere had exiled three copies of Lotus Petal. You don't see that every day. There was a Helm of Obedience in play. While this might not be a card that everyone is super familiar with, it is a powerhouse well understood in Legacy, for its ability to create a two-card combo with Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void, whereby one activation will get rid of a player's entire deck (because Helm of Obedience is looking for cards to hit the graveyard, and Leyline/Rest in Peace means it never gets to stop grinding, as no card ever makes it there).

No, the card on this board that takes the proverbial cake is Mindshrieker. Even in Innistrad draft Mindshrieker was far from a solid gold hit, though it certainly won games on occasion here and there. What was this bird up to in Legacy? Well, it turns out that Mindshrieker fits very neatly into Sneak and Show, offering a whole mess of possibilities. Just from watching one game we began to see the possibilities;

Sneak and Show has gotten a whole lot sneakier with the addition of Mindshrieker. Yet another innovation in Legacy that just keeps the format with the old cards feeling fresh and new.

Saturday, 1:44 p.m. – A Glossary of Decks

by Tobi Henke

Legacy: the Eternal struggle. This weekend's format features cards from all twenty years of Magic's existence, from Alpha all the way to Gatecrash. This huge amount of cards leads to an incredible variety of strategies. The number of viable decks is truly astonishing and can seem almost intimidating. Throughout the tournament, you may read, for example, about mavericks, belchers, and bugs (well, BUG really) and happen to find yourself quite lost.

To avoid any such predicament, let's things off with a list of the many deck archetypes commonly seen at Legacy events, shall we? In no particular order ...

RUG (Red-Blue-Green), sometimes called "RUG Delver" or "Canadian Threshold," is one of the oldest archetypes of the Legacy format, though it evolved quite a bit to arrive at its current, now very stable form. An aggrocontrol deck, it mixes efficient beatdown creatures (Delver of Secrets, Nimble Mongoose, Tarmogoyf) with countermagic (Force of Will, Daze, often Spell Pierce), mana denial (Stifle and Wasteland for the ubiquitous fetch- and dual lands, respectively), and a little burn (Lightning Bolt). Only one card in here costs more than one mana, so the deck runs on 18 lands (four of them Wasteland, which are hardly ever used for mana production) with low-cost library manipulation (Brainstorm, Ponder) to fuel Nimble Mongoose and Tarmogoyf, to turn Delver into Insectile Aberration, and to just generally increase consistency.

Reanimator decks use Entomb or Careful Study to first get Griselbrand into the graveyard, then Reanimate or Exhume to get it out of there, often as early as turn two. Once on the battlefield, the 7/7 lifelink demon quickly takes over the game and provides enough extra cards (including discard and Force of Will) as to make it impossible for an opponent to get back into the game.

High Tide, a mono-blue deck, puts a completely different spin on storm combo. Instead of rituals and mana artifacts, here it's the deck's namesake card which generates lots of extra mana in combination with spells that untap lands (most notably Time Spiral) to cast more and more spells and end things with a massive Brain Freeze.

Zoo, the most aggressive straight beatdown deck of the format, combines undercosted creatures (Wild Nacatl, Kird Ape, Tarmogoyf) with burn (Lightning Bolt, Lightning Helix), another tried and trusted strategy as old as time, but recently not seen very often because of its limited ability to interact and/or race the format's combo decks.

Round 4 Feature Match – Tomoharu Saito vs. Dennis Holstein

by Tim Willoughby

It's been a little while since we last saw him at a European Grand Prix, but Tomoharu Saito has a bit of a history with Strasbourg. He was the champion of the last Grand Prix Strasbourg, back when it was Time Spiral block constructed. Not quite as powerful a format, but still one where there was Tarmogoyf, one of the premium threats in this format too.

Saito's opponent, Dennis Holstein of Germany, had played the Japanese star on Friday in a Grand Prix trial, and seemed a little wary up against him for a second time on the weekend. On the draw with a double mulligan, that was fair enough.

Still more copies of Gemstone Mine came from Holstein's deck, but little else, while Saito was able to flip a copy of Delver of Secrets thanks to a Force of Will on top of his deck. It appeared that Holstein was on a combo deck of some description, and facing a rough matchup in red/blue/green delver, even though Saito, after playing a Tropical Island, had not found any more lands than that one Wasteland. At the start of the tournament Saito had said that he was expecting a lot of combo decks, hence his choice for the weekend. Would he be able to power through this one?

When they played on Friday, Dennis Holstein couldn't quite get past Saito – maybe now is his time.

Gemstone Mine and Brainstorm from Holstein kept his train a-rollin' as he looked to sculpt a hand capable of winning against the countermagic that he knew Saito had at the ready. A Chrome Mox resolved, imprinted with Infernal Tutor. Rite of Flame also got through, and Dark Ritual too. Empty the Warrens made 10 Goblin tokens, and threatened to make the race one that favoured the combo deck. Saito's second Delver of Secrets was his only play, and he had to block where he could to stay alive. One set of attacks put him on 12, the next just 5 life.

For the second game in a row, Saito had only had a Tropical Island and a Wasteland as lands. This time though, he was not able to squeak out the win. This match would come down to the rubber game.

Tomoharu Saito 1 – 1 Dennis Holstein

For the third game, Holstein was again on a mulligan, and had a first turn Gitaxian Probe. He saw

Holstein was stuck on mana, and Tarmogoyf meant he was tight on time too. Saito's deck had amply punished a patchy draw, and a Gitaxian Probe showed he had two copies of Force of Will at the ready, just in case. Attacks soon took Holstein to two, and he had to go for it. Lotus Petal, followed by Brainstorm. That was enough to elicit the Force of Will from Saito, which in turn met a handshake from his opponent.

Tomoharu Saito defeats Dennis Holstein two games to one.

Round 5 Feature Match – Thomas Enevoldsen vs. Helmut Summersberger

by Tobi Henke

Austrian old-school pro Helmut Summersberger brought a version of RUG Delver, one of the more common decks in the current Legacy format, whereas Denmark's Thomas Enevoldsen chose "Death & Taxes," a deck conspicuously missing from our compendium of the most popular decks posted earlier today.

Nope. Back to two lands again, Summersberger summoned Snapcaster Mage at end of turn, which gave him exactly enough power to win on his next attack.

Thomas Enevoldsen 1-1 Helmut Summersberger

Game 3

Once again, Enevoldsen had no play on turn one, once again Summersberger had Delver of Secrets. This time, however, Enevoldsen simply killed it with Sunlance, a card that raised an eyebrow or two from Summersberger and several spectators.

Now the game entered a phase during which both players were battling over Summersberger's mana: Enevoldsen had two Rishadan Ports, Summersberger fought back by simply refusing to use his fetchlands. As you can imagine, not much else happened for a while, bar some cantrips from Summersberger.

Helmut Summersberger

In fact, the next nonland card to enter the battlefield was Enevoldsen's Æther Vial. Neither player had any threats, and time was running out. Summersberger finally, triumphantly found a Nimble Mongoose with about a minute left. A little back and forth between Enevoldsen's creatures and Summersberger's burn spells took up some time too, and when the last extra turn had been played, it wasn't even clear who would have won this game in the long run.

Final result:

Thomas Enevoldsen 1-1 Helmut Summersberger, both still undefeated.

Saturday, 6:39 p.m. – Decktech: RUG Burn with Valentin Mackl

by Tobi Henke

Valentin Mackl is an up-and-coming player from Austria with the uncanny ability to make it to the second day of virtually every Grand Prix he attends. He routinely makes it onto Rich Hagon's list of players to watch, which is a very good reason to do just that. So I did. Specifically, I watched him play an interesting take on RUG. Played, that is, to a 6-0 start into the tournament so far.

Valentin Mackl

"I don't have the usual Stifles, Wastelands, and Dazes, but instead a lot more burn. I never really liked that part of the deck, because it can be somewhat inconsistent. Once your opponent draws out of his mana screw, many of these cards essentially turn into blanks," Mackl explained. "However, I did like the agressiveness of the deck, so I decided to increase that."

A development that took place over many smaller bi-weekly tournaments in Mackl's hometown store, the "Spielraum" in Vienna, saw him adding more and more burn spells. His deck now has four Chain Lightnings in addition to Lightning Bolt, and even a singleton Price of Progress, with more in the sideboard.

"Price of Progress is awesome, especially once opponents realize I really don't attack their mana at all. Against normal RUG, players will often try to fetch some basic lands to not be punished by Wasteland, whereas here they can go all-out on dual lands," said Mackl. "Of course, they still get punished for it—not less, just later and differently."

Round 7 Feature Match – Anton Karlinski vs. Samuele Estratti

by Tobi Henke

Samuele Estratti, the Pro Tour Philadelphia champion, really needs no introduction. His opponent Anton Karlinski was part of the German World Cup team last year, but going into this weekend didn't have any major finishes to his name yet. Time to change that? The matchup here was Storm (Karlinski) versus RUG (Estratti).

Over the next couple of turns, Estratti had two Wastelands for Karlinski's lands, but with the help of two more Brainstorms, Karlinski wasn't really in trouble mana-wise. When Insectile Aberration had him down to 1 life, he began his turn with three lands and a full grip of cards. First, Karlinski cast Duress on Estratti, who took a confident look at his hand and decided to let Karlinski take a peek too (as well as a card). Karlinski didn't even finish resolving his Duress. One look was enough and he packed up his cards in concession to proceed to game two.

Saturday, 8:36 p.m. – Single Card Strategies #2

by Tim Willoughby

There was a time in Magic's history where booster packs from non-core sets had a little symbol on them reading 'Expert'. This was to let new players know that there was the potential for slightly more complicated cards to be in the boosters. Ultimately these days, careful templating and hard work from R&D ensures that such signage isn't really necessary any more – while Magic games can get complicated, the idea is that most of the time, most cards don't cause too much of a headache.

Prophecy – for experts only.

This has not always been the case. Speaking to Jared Sylva, one of the Head Judges here at Grand Prix Strasbourg, he let me know that he'd already had a ruling about one of the more complicated cards in Magic's long and storied history – Chains of Mephistopheles. Chains is a very cool card, which is actually rather well positioned to deal with a lot of the powerful cards in the format, but if I were to pick out cards that require a good understanding of the rules, it would certainly be one of them. To make life more fun, the text on the card is pretty small, and not exactly perfect for helping you understand what happens when one or more copies are in play. For that, I enlisted the help of Daniel Kitachewsky. First I'll explain how it works, then why it is good.

Chains of Mephistopheles affects every card drawn, except for the first each player draws in their draw step. So if you are playing fair, only drawing your one card on your turn, Chains of Mephistopheles does nothing, Legacy isn't a format where a lot of people play fair though, which is where the fun starts.

For any cards apart from that first card draw, there is a replacement effect. If you would draw you have to replace 'draw a card' with 'discard a card, then draw a card'. Suddenly that card draw doesn't look so hot right? If you can't discard a card, you don't get to draw a card, and instead you put a card from the top of your deck into your graveyard.

Now you're in a spot where Brainstorm effectively lets you discard and draw three times, then put two cards back on top of your deck. If you have no cards in hand, it's even worse. Given how good Brainstorm is in the format, that's pretty exciting.

Where things can get a little more confusing is with two copies of Chains of Mephistopheles in play. With two copies in play, both replacement effects will try to happen one by one. That means that if you had a bunch of cards in hand, you'd have to discard two cards before you could draw one with Think Twice. The most that you can ever be milled by Chains of Mephistopheles is once per attempted draw though. If multiple copies of the replacement effect try to happen, as soon as you hit a point of not having any cards in hand, 'draw a card' is replaced with 'mill one' meaning that from there on out, no more replacement effects need to happen.

So what does Chains of Mephistopheles achieve in play in Legacy? Well, it makes a lot of unfair decks quite a bit fairer. For those control or combo decks that rely on a lot of extra card draw to make things work, be that with Jace, Brainstorm or Griselbrand, the Legends enchantment is a fairly major road-block. If you build with it in mind, you can even sneakily turn things around by either using effects like Dark Confidant to get extra cards in hand without falling afoul of the enchantment, or back it up with even a little discard to make the effect more punishing.

One word of advice though. It doesn't work as well with Sylvan Library as one player had hoped. Don't play them in the same deck – that was the judge call for Jared Sylva that started out this entire crazy charade.

Round 8 Feature Match – Jean-Mary Accart vs. Valentin Mackl

by Tobi Henke

You may have read about Valentin Mackl's RUG burn deck earlier in the coverage. One more round has passed since then, and one more round of course means one more win. With both players at 7-0 and already safe in day two, now it was up to Jean-Mary Accart and his Show and Tell/Omniscience deck to put a stop to Mackl's winning streak.

Accart proceeded to Enter the Infinite. Mackl responded with Brainstorm. Accart thought about it for a bit: clearly, Mackl didn't have another counterspell at the moment, and with three cards in hand, he might get two out of Brainstorm. Accart cast another Pact of Negation to prevent that.

Unfortunately, the top three cards of his library didn't include any lands either. Accart continued with Preordain, Mackl continued to dig for land with Thought Scour. No land was forthcoming, and now Accart resolved Defense Grid.

Another main-phase Brainstorm finally provided Mackl with a Tropical Island and, subsequently, a Nimble Mongoose. Accart had the perfect set-up for his combo, but apparently was missing the actual combo itself. By now down to 10 life, he cast Cunning Wish to get Noxious Revival and passed back to Mackl. Another turn later, and it was all over.

Now it was a race both against the clock of Nimble Mongoose as well as the actual clock showing the time limit. Mackl first lost against the latter, when he could only get Accart down to 7 on extra turn number four. And on the fifth and final extra turn, Mackl proceeded to also lose against Accart. Here was a second Defense Grid (just in case), there was Show and Tell, here came Omniscience and Enter the Infinite. Mackl extended his hand in concession, "Great match. Awesome deck."